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"Well, I guess 'twon't pay me to set down ag'in," she announced. "I'm goin' to take it easy on the way home. I dunno but I'll let down the bars, an' poke a little ways into the north pastur', an' see if I can't git a mite o' pennyr'yal. I'll be in ag'in to-morrer or next day." "So do, so do," returned Mrs. Lamson. "'Tain't no use to ask you to come down, I s'pose?
"Pick me a small han'ful," she commanded. "No, no, a small han'ful, I said, o' them large pennyr'yal sprigs! I go to all the trouble an' cossetin' of 'em just so as to have you ready to meet such occasions, an' last year, you may remember, you never stopped here at all the day you went up country. An' the frost come at last an' blacked it.
Among the grass grew such pennyroyal as the rest of the world could not provide. There was a fine fragrance in the air as we gathered it sprig by sprig and stepped along carefully, and Mrs. Todd pressed her aromatic nosegay between her hands and offered it to me again and again. "There's nothin' like it," she said; "oh no, there's no such pennyr'yal as this in the state of Maine.
Thar's the Bloo Grass deestrict, the Pennyr'yal deestrict, an' the Purchase. The Bloo Grass folks is the 'ristocrats, while them low-flung trash from the Purchase is a heap plebeian. The Pennyr'yal outfit is kind o' hesitatin' 'round between a balk an' a break-down in between the other two, an' is part 'ristocratic that a-way an' part mud.
"It must be a nice way of passin' a rainy Sunday," said the Cap'n, sarcastically, pushing the plate back across the table; "set and look at that and hum a pennyr'yal hymn! It's sartinly a rollickin' life you're leadin', Mister Crymble." Mr. Crymble did not retort.
"Pennyr'yal," she said happily, and felt the richness of being. When Old Lady Lamson had ironed her shirts and put them away again, all hot and sweet from the fire, it was five o'clock, and the birds had long been trying to drag creation up from sleep, to sing with them the wonders of the dawn.
I spent some happy hours right here. I always liked Nathan, and he never knew. But this pennyr'yal always reminded me, as I'd sit and gather it and hear him talkin' it always would remind me of the other one." She looked away from me, and presently rose and went on by herself. There was something lonely and solitary about her great determined shape.
We only brung him up till he was ten years old, and then an uncle he was named after took him and gin him a college schoolin', and then put him into his store in Worcester. Your head aches wus, don't it? Poor thing! The pennyr'yal will be steeped directly," she added, in an aside to Madam Conway, who had groaned aloud as if in pain.
By this time Betsy Jane brought a basin of water, which she dashed in the face of the unconscious woman, who soon began to revive. "Pennyr'yal tea'll settle her stomach quicker'n anything else," said Mrs. Douglas. "I'll clap a little right on the stove;" and, helping Madam Conway to the sofa, she left the room. "There may possibly be a mistake, after all," thought Maggie.
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